Weather Idiots

What’s with local stations pre-empting broadcasts of network shows to give me weather reports? I sort of understood it when I lived in Alabama and we had a heavy tornado season, but even then I thought it was assinine. Let me know if there are any new developments but don’t turn the tornado report into a two-hour program wherein you send your idiot junior woodchuck “meterologist” outside to get his hair blown around interviewing morons who are outside in bad weather. Also, I really don’t want to look at your blasted Doppler Super Duper Weather Radar XVIII Mark A9A. Why don’t you interpret the data and get back to me when you’re done? You’re the one that took the two week training course.

The idiots running the DC CBS affiliate have this week ruined the only two (non-NFL football) shows I watch on that network with thunderstorm warnings. It’s raining? What precisely am I supposed to do with the information? For one thing, I already know it’s raining. For another, if I’m inside watching television, I’m probably reasonably safe from lightning strikes whereas, conversely, if I’m in a location where I’m in significant danger of being struck by lightning, I’m unlikely to be watching television.

The phenomenon is even worse when watching the program via TiVo delay, when the offending weather event is over.

It was a significant weather event, by the way. While we were well past it here in Loudoun County, folks living in southeastern Prince Georges County, Charles County and Calvert County were under a Tornado Watch. To put it in context, a couple of years ago, a tornado ripped through Charles County, with lots of damage and several deaths. Folks in that area are a little sensitive about weather events that might kill them.

As a side note, the area Skywarn Amateur Radio network had been active for several hours, and continued to receive reports of severe weather throughout the period of preemption (9:00-9:30 EDT). Hey, at least they didn’t preempt American Idol, right? You did Tivo AI, right?

Providing severe weather info is one of the ‘community service’ requirements of a station’s broadcasting license. Of course, providing unending team coverage of a Severe Drizzle Advisory isn’t mandated. So why do they do it? Because it gets ratings.

The digital “HD” broadcast from WUSA was showing the network feed, while the network feed was getting replaced and mangled on the analog broadcast.

WJLA (ABC) divides their digital channel bandwidth into two subchannels–subchannel 1 is the network feed and subchannel 2 is weather radar (except when they screw up and end up broadcasting a frame from an Appleby’s commercial for over an hour… like they did during the recent broadcast of “Unbreakable”. WJLA seems to screw up on their digital broadcasts quite a bit.)

A tornado watch is pretty much nothing. It just means conditions are “favorable” for a tornado. In Alabama, we called that “summer.” If it’s a tornado warning, then I want to know about it. But even then, a little icon at the bottom of the screen, scrolling text every once in a while, or even a very brief interruption is enough to convey the info. 25 consecutive minutes of coverage, pre-empting the programming, simply isn’t warranted unless there’s actual tornado activity causing significant threat to people’s lives. Otherwise, it’s not only annoying it’s crying Wolf.

Yesterday during the ’24’ finale, WTTG (Fox 5 DC) ran big text bars along the left and bottom edges of the screen, displaying useless information such as “severe thunderstorm alert” in the bars. The broadcast was displayed in reduced size in the remaining portion of the screen.

I see your point, James, but (merely playing devil’s advocate) there were tornado warnings for Prince Georges and Calvert counties last evening, and the weather folks got the clearest indication that you can get from radar that there was tornadic activity in those storms (there were two different ones that converged over southern PG County).

Add to that the fact that folks are a mite sensitive, especially in Southern Maryland since the La Plata disaster in 2002, when there’s the possibility of a tornado touching down. They don’t happen as often around here, but they do tend to be more destructive than in other places around the country.

Sorry, the debate team fought it’s way to the top of my consciousness. I’m better now, thank you.

Yeah, I vaguely remember that storm now. The one was so close to 9/11 that I didn’t pay much attention and, really, minor catastrophes elsewhere (I didn’t move here until 8/02) tend not to interest me all that much.

I figured they must have banned trailers up here; I don’t think I’ve seen one. In much of the Deep South, there are no zoning laws, so you can literally have a trailer across the street from a mansion.

When the tornado warning was in effect for Loudoun County, I turned to the Weather channel to see if they were covering it and to check the radar so that I could see where in the county the heaviest of the storm was (it’s a large area). Local alerts overrode the audio of the Weather channel! For an hour, some lady’s recorded voice warned of imminent danger.

Interestingly, channel 8 had good coverage of the storm and I was able to see that my area of Loudoun wasn’t affected. We got barely a sprinkle.

I guess the preemptions didn’t bother me so much because I’m very weather-oriented, and when weather events happen I’m usually watching them evolve from my computer and on the local Amateur Radio Skywarn net.

Skywarn. With storm season approaching here in Georgia I’m glad we seem once again to have a working radio in the house. Last May we had a tornado warning in our county and our local net was going strong.

Nothing of significance happened at my house of course (nothing ever does), but a few short miles away some microburst winds knocked down a bunch of trees and damaged houses.

I’d hate to have to hunker down for another storm like that, but without my ham radio.

Couldn’t stand the weather (report)
James Joyner goes off on a rant about the local weather reporting in Loudon County. Seems they pre-empted one of his favorite shows. Phrase of the day: Let me know if there are any new developments but don’t turn the…

Meteorologist Rob McKenna reporting…
James Joyner… WhatÃ¢Â€Â™s with local stations pre-empting broadcasts of network shows to give me weather reports? I sort of understood it when I lived in Alabama and we had a heavy tornado season, but even then I thought it was…